Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Let’s increase the supply of knowledge and learning and money as time. That’s the information theory of economics and it applies today more than ever.
Currently we are wasting time and human minds, our scarce resources, in order to save face for politicians.
We are destroying the village in order to save it. We need surgical strikes and strategies more than surgical masks and business bans.
That’s what the politicians are being paid for. Let’s stop paying them until they get it right."
George Gilder
"Lockdown has created 100 million households of resistance – even among those who feel the government is helping. You take away jobs, opportunity, exercise, family connections and provide 'free' money, mass surveillance and a police state – that ought to work, right, Gov? But many humans are as least as smart as border collies, and we found all kinds of new ways to get our fixes, most of which entailed new learning and new tools, even new priorities and goals that will complement the coming insurrection. None of what we are learning is making us better citizens, but some of what we are learning is going to help us survive. Whether on purpose or by accident, whether we agree politically or not, we are all accelerating the collapse of the already collapsing state, and even seeing beyond that horizon towards something better."
Karen Kwiatkowski
"The lasting impact of the coronavirus going forward—alongside the devastating economic consequences that we have yet to truly face—could be deepening a regional, cultural, and political polarization that has been building in recent years. These are also precisely the sort of differences that are only escalated by centralized political power, and that will only be fueled by the upcoming theater of the 2020 presidential election.
Although national tragedies tend to bring a country together, it seems clear that the coronavirus will leave America as divided as it has been in modern history."
Tho Bishop
"As humans, we all face life and death constantly, but strive to enjoy our lives, our families, our friends, and the beauty of nature for as long as possible. There are evil forces attempting to eliminate all that is good in life in order to gain total power and control over us, and this effort is leading us away from joy and happiness and into the abyss of hell. This is not acceptable, and has to be quickly stopped. Instead of asking others to fix this, or to tell you what to do to stop it, stand up and stop it yourself. Each of us as individuals has a responsibility to fight for our family, our freedom, and ourselves. There are so many more of us than the enemy ruling class and government, but looking for a 'leader' or savior to come to your rescue is nothing more than a guarantee that you will forever remain a servant to your masters. If real freedom and the enjoyment of life are desired, fear must be defeated by individual courage and action."
GaryD.Barnett
"The coronavirus scare is a hoax. It is a manufactured government crisis. The governmental response has brought untold death and destruction to human society. A level of corona communism has been implemented that far exceeds anything that humanity has ever known. The response far exceeds the impact of the virus. Every totalitarian has spent these weeks licking their chops at the amount of harm they can do to unsuspecting people if they just continue to parrot the line that every invasion of all they hold dear is being done for their own good. As long as the invasions are individually tolerated, the invasions will only get worse."
Allan Stevo
"By ordering lockdowns, these governors betrayed the Declaration of Independence '…That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted…' They betrayed us. They betrayed their states. They betrayed their country. They may have done so in panic or mistakenly or to look good or to save lives or for any number of reasons, but there is no doubt. Their lockdowns orders were and are betrayals.
The governors betrayed our principles. There is no point in having principles, such as individual rights to work, to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness, if they are violated hastily and unlawfully and then replaced by their very opposites. It’s worthy of the term 'betrayal'."
Michael Rozeff
"An infected mind is a far more dangerous pestilence than any plague. One only threatens your life. The other destroys your character."
Marcus Aurelius
"How can a person that is not vaccinated 'harm' people that are vaccinated? How are they putting those people at risk? If the vaccine actually works, then the vaccinated people are safe from infection, aren't they? So, the only person 'at risk' is the person that chose not to vaccinate. This comes down to personal choice, there is no question of 'the greater good' or social risk.
Some vaccine advocates will then claim that unvaccinated people could be host to'mutations' that threaten herd immunity. The problem is that there is no evidence to support this argument. The vast majority of viruses tend to mutate into less deadly or infectious strains, not more deadly. The only mitigating factors would be if a virus was deliberately designed or engineered to mutate in an unnatural manner.
If a virus is able to mutate into a vastly different and more deadly strain that can attack vaccinated persons then the vaccine was never useful to begin with, and forced vaccinations are pointless. And if the vaccine is effective then there is simply no basis for the position that an unvaccinated person puts vaccinated people in danger."
Bob Livingston
"COVID-19 is an episode. It is a tragic reality for those who’ve died because of it or whose deaths were hastened by it. There is no NEW NORMAL. This epidemic is part of the old normal, and that has not changed. People who are adopting the idea of never returning to normal or the idea of a NEW NORMAL are playing into the hands of people like Gates. They’re trying to get inside your head. They want to advance their agendas. They want to control you.
We are going back to where we were, and we are going back soon. We are not waiting for some vaccine or other. Our lives do not depend on a vaccine rushed into production. We are not going to stay 6 feet apart and we’re not going to keep wearing masks. We are going back to where we were.
We are going to breathe life into liberty and give it new meaning. We are going to revive it, and we’re going to act like men, not wimps, and that expression takes in the strong females among us, of which there is no shortage. We are going to bear the risks of life. We are going to exercise our common sense and not be waiting for some cure dispensed by Fauci, Trump, Gates or anyone else."
Michael Rozeff
"Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, for starters, need to be called before Congress and investigated. I believe, along with others, they have committed crimes against humanity. It is only there motives we don't know. But they have created a massive amount of anxiety in the country for no reason, amidst other destruction."
Robert Wenzel
"Between felonious Pharma & captive CDC, vaccine skepticism should be at DEFCON 1."
Ernest Cooley
"Rejecting looting while advocating justice for someone who was murdered in slow motion on a city street is more mature than many in this country are prepared to pursue at this time, but the erosion of experts and the rise of individualism could turn this thing around in a big way.
This is a country of outcasts, refugees, weirdos and other assorted rabble each pursuing her or his particular preferences, most of whom would avoid encroaching on another’s tastes out of basic empathy; sociopaths worked to disallow that with the government & press providing the rationalization invoked by the public, but one thing is becoming clear: a growing segment of the populace isn’t having it.
It’s enough to make an tired soul smile."
Jim Lloyd
"The Mayor of Chicago has come out and bluntly stated that you have to eliminate the executive branch of government and move to a dictatorship in a legal sense where decrees are simply mandated with no choice. This is the road to totalitarianism where people will not even have a right to vote. I have warned that the left always turns to violence. They are never satisfied living in a free society for they just cannot sleep at night worrying that someone else has something they do not. This is simply where their logic has ALWAYS led throughout history without exception. They say good cannot exist without evil, for you would never be able to define 'good' without some comparison. This is the curse of humanity."
Martin Armstrong
"Governments rule by deception. Otherwise they could not rule at all. Governments use economic, social, moral and legal fictions to twist rational thought into self-sacrifice and the destruction of individualism. Men, by nature, do not willingly volunteer their property, their labor and their being into servitude. But they are manipulated by an esoteric system based upon word manipulation.
Governments are made up of corporate fictions or artificial persons. Therefore, the greatest enemy of government is the individual, and particularly the individualist. This sets up perpetual conflict and an ongoing effort of government to manipulate the individual against his best interest in favor of government and central authority. The ultimate goal of governments is to create nonpersons who are nothing more than chattels or merchandise 'for use in commerce'."
Bob Livingston
"The State acquires power at the expense of freedom, and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates."
Frank Chodorov
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of naves.
'Society' cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
Edmund Burke
"Part of the Orwellian PC trend in language is that you can no longer call something what it is. You have to make up a softer and less accurate description of who or what they are. You’re not allowed to offend bums, derelicts, or vagrants. Even though they are, by their very nature, offensive."
Doug Casey
"Men's and nations' finest hour consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response. Hence in those darkest hours, we must light our individual candles rather than vying with others to call attention to the enveloping darkness. Our indignation about injustice should lead to illumination, for if it does not, we are only adding to the despair-and the moment of gravest danger is when there is so little light that darkness seems normal."
Neal A. Maxwell
"[Bernie] Sanders promises the killing virus of deep socialism. That’s what his 'political revolution' means. It’s across the board: economic, political, social and environmental. It affects every cell of the body. It affects every nook and cranny of our lives. It is the master. It as much as kills us because it kills our last remaining freedoms. Sanders is the death-dealer. He is the merchant of death. He is the satan posing as deliverer. He is the herald of evil, which always includes lying, non-being and the death of freedom. His socialist ideas suppress and kill the person and the creative being. They kill freedom, being and life."
Michael Rozeff
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass
"Absent the ability to cajole, fine, cage, maim and/or kill, how can government get the voluntary obedience of its citizens? Would everyone pay the various levels of extortionate taxes imposed voluntarily? Would they stop for those flashing lights for a speeding violation if compliance were not mandatory? For without tax agents and police powers, no government would be capable of exacting obedience from the residents of their taxing jurisdictions. Without regulatory or tax slavery, a government could not function…at all. They are based on the threat or actual use of violence against EVERYONE. Because if one, just one individual, (outside of the DC nomenklatura) got away with not paying taxes or obeying even the most banal of the tens of thousands of laws imposed year after year by the wise men appointed and elected above us, the system would collapse in weeks or months."
Bill Buppert
"One of the most popular critiques of our current economic system is its rabid consumerism-at-all-costs.
Unfortunately, the critics instantly attribute this directly to capitalism.
Capitalism, however, is simply the individual’s ability to enjoy the spoils of one’s own labor unimpeded (and unmanipulated) by the apparatus of the State.
It’s a system which presupposes sovereignty of the individual and the freedom of choice.
Indeed, freedom allows people to choose gluttony, greed, and rabid consumerism, but freedom is not the cause of those things.
In fact, it’s often overlooked that free market capitalism cannot sustain itself without morality.
They go hand-in-hand.
Freedom is a game of rewards and consequences.
Sometimes, lady luck is not in your favor.
Such is life.
But most of the time, the scales of justice work fairly well.
And bad decisions and intentions lead to unfortunate 'coincidences'."
Chris Campbell
"Secession today is not only viable, but also necessary in order to regain freedom for the individual. It would lead to actual freedom simply due to the fact that separating from the federal government would break the current command that exists in this central power, and would for all those participating, eliminate the central authority. Without the power to use its taxing "authority" and restrictive laws, the federal government would wither and die."
Gary D. Barnett
"The American public lost control of the federal government when the rights of secession and nullification were abolished in 1865. John C. Calhoun was right when he explained in his 'Disquisition on Government' that a written constitution would never be enough to control and restrain legal plunder. Some mechanism that could be utilized by the people of the free and independent states, organized in political communities, was necessary if the central government was to be the servant rather than the master of the people, he said. Naturally, Calhoun is one of the most demonized political figures in American history by the American ruling class."
Tom DiLorenzo
"All government is authoritarian; and the more democratic a government is the more authoritative it is; for with the people behind it, it can push authority further than any Tsar or foreign despot dare do."
George Bernard Shaw
"The characteristic mark of the 'state of nature' is irreconcilable conflict. Each specimen is the rival of all other specimens. The means of subsistence are scarce and do not grant survival to all. The conflicts can never disappear. If a band of men, united with the object of defeating rival bands, succeeds in annihilating its foes, new antagonisms arise among the victors over the distribution of the booty. The source of the conflicts is always the fact that each man's portion curtails the portions of all other men. This is a dilemma that does not allow of any peaceful solution.
What makes friendly relations between human beings possible is the higher productivity of the division of labor. It removes the natural conflict of interests. For where there is division of labor, there is no longer a question of the distribution of a supply not capable of enlargement. Thanks to the higher productivity of labor performed under the division of tasks, the supply of goods multiplies. A preeminent common interest, the preservation and further intensification of social cooperation, becomes paramount and obliterates all essential collisions."
Ludwig von Mises
"If you would be a real seeker of truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
René Descartes
"In the past, men were not disingenuous about their moves. Conquering was expected of kings and emperors. They did it for its own sake. Alexander didn’t really need Afghanistan. Today men have to speak of spreading democracy and human rights and overthrowing evil dictators. Like wind-up Victrolas they speak of duty, honor, country. They insist that war crimes are isolated incidents. In fact a war crime is business as usual that a reporter has heard about."
Fred Reed
"Before there were cops, there were Americans."
Heavily armed redneck helping to protect a business in lawless and criminal controlled Minneapolis